Why I'm a Pirate • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#411

Post by sciboy » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:03 PM UTC

gillianseed wrote: post #293

sciboy wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree - technically. If we invent a technology that allows us to read thoughts, should you be allowed to read them without the thinkers permission? The thinker still has their thoughts. What about disseminate them via torrents? Would that be "fair"? Is that the society we want? What about monitoring conversations via surveillance means? The speakers still have their conversation. Should we be allowed to…

Truly broken analogy. If you want to go with the 'reading thoughts' (whats wrong with cars!?) then with copyright infringement (which is what we are discussing here) it would be like someone selling the right to listen to their thoughts, and someone who paid for it choosing to relay those thoughts to others for free. Certainly relaying those thoughts for free can possibly limit potential opportunities to futher sell…

The point is that it shouldn't matter how the person chooses to put their thoughts into the world, they are their thoughts not yours. If they choose to do a private performance (a concert) and it gets pirated, that's not much different then if they are having a conversation and it gets pirated. The distinction isn't theirs it's the pirates.

Just because they are already granting permission to "read their thoughts" for money doesn't give anyone license to just do what they want does it?

I fail to see how the users choice on how to distribute files grants pirates license to go against the thought originators wishes.

Note I'm not saying I agree with this - but I find it interesting to think about the opposite viewpoint to my own as it helps me rationalise my position.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#412

Post by nkassis » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

envex wrote: post #220

HeyImAlex wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel entitled to it in the first place? It isn't your god given right to watch community in hd at the drop of a hat. If the old gaurd isn't providing what you want then don't buy their stuff. Use your money to invest in services that ARE paving the way to the future. If the profit margins on the industry are as large as people say, it should be a race to the bottom, just like you see with artists self dist…

I may be wrong, but most of the reasons that I can't watch community in HD At the drop of a hat is because our gov. can't figure out a deal with the US gov. on rights. I would gladly pay double the price for Netflix Canada if the service was as good as it is in the states. I don't mind paying for something if it provides me a good service, but it doesn't. Netflix canada is a steaming pile. So, "Use your money to inve…

I'm feel the same as you. I pay 30 a month for espnplayer.com to watch NCAA football games for my college. I mean my wife thinks I'm nuts but there is a legal way to watch these games so I pay for it. Now I can't seem to find something like this for a lot of other things I enjoy. My wife has to resort to going around the web to get access to shows she enjoyed in the US. Now I understand that some channels in Canada both the rights to most of those things (As for the NCAA games they don't seem to broadcast them here at all) and are not implementing web streaming services for them which is dumb.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#413

Post by tlb » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:10 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #405

billswift wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They argue that way because their inflated claims have no merit. The only justification for copyright that doesn't amount to arrogant and unjustifiable claims of "creator privilege" (my phrase, but that is what their wordy arguments amount to) is that given in the US Constitution, as a practical matter "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclu…

I'm hopelessly biased here, because I make video games. But do you not feel that the world would be worse off--culturally and technologically--without a commercial video games industry? And do you not think that the utility of games--faster and more ubiquitous computers--is self-evident when you compare it to a world without a commercial video games industry, but extremely difficult or impossible to anticipate in adv…

MMORPGS, or any game where the community counts, don't need copyright to be profitable.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#414

Post by nkassis » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #380

ThomPete wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all I have had plenty of my ideas, designs etc. copied. I don't care cause at the end of the day it doesn't matter. I don't know why you guys keep arguing the same misguided argument. Here is the difference. When I design for a client I put in the work and design specifically to to them. I am in other words a performing artist. I don't just send them a CD with the same design I did for all my other clients.…

Part of the reason you are paid so much as a designer who works "for hire" either employed or as a freelancer is that your client wants something unique. Let's assume that there is no copyright. You get a contract from a client to design them a logo , website and smartphone app to promote their business. However your client knows that if a competitor wishes to copy their entire website including logo and app etc they…

Ever walked into a department store like Macy's? It's all ripoff from designers. There is no copyright on clothe design yet that hasn't killed the designer clothing market.

Counterfeit goods to my knowledge fall under trademark laws.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#415

Post by sunir » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:16 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #391

sunir wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-rival argument is popular, but not very robust. There is an economic harm by an unauthorized third party increasing the supply and diluting the value to the creator. Another rough equivalent to criminally using without depleting physical goods is someone who breaks into your house to sleep in your bed while you are on vacation. Even if they are clean, and the bed remains the same afterwards for all reasonable…

So, again, we start to dig into some very deep taboos here, right? Is it really that bad if somebody who needs a bed uses mine without permission while it lies unused, provided it isn't harmed and is returned to its initial condition? We're big about virtualization and the cloud and shared hosting, right? Why not consider something similar for worldly goods? It seems awfully inefficient, with 7 billion people, for ev…

Ha, well, it's a losing argument if you have to unpack our basic economic, political, and legal system. The solution is not proportional to the problem.

I think parking is a similar problem at a similar societal cost. People need to park. If you provide no way to park legally, they will park illegally to get on with their business. And indeed, fines for piracy, like fines for parking infractions, and a better distribution model from the market, like enough parking lots, have been a winning solution.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#416

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:28 PM UTC

grellas wrote: post #212

Creative effort - or at at least any that is truly worthy of the name - takes tears, and sweat, and blood. We can marvel at the output of an artist, or a writer, or a composer, or a film maker and yet fail to focus on the years of toil that often preceded that work. And I am not here speaking of some isolated genius. I still remember the days when I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills that I decided to…

Quite. CDs filled an important need at the time they came on the market - quality music reproduction that did not degrade with repeated use like vinyl or tape does. Sure, digital delivery would have been nice, but back then modems ran at about 1200bps and mp3 encoding was a gleam in the eye of someone at the Fraunhofer Institute.

Two wrongs don't make a right; saying the service isn't good enough is a cheap excuse. Pirates should articulate what they do pay for, not what (they say) they would pay for. Talk is cheap, distribution and marketing do have costs associated with them.

Edit: my point is to defend the basic idea of copyright and content distribution as an economic good, rather to support any particular distribution model or SOPA itself. Coming from a film background, it costs a great deal of money to bring a high-quality film to the screen, and to reliably recoup that investment, distributors usually spend 50% of the film's budget on marketing. Films are sort of like startups insofar as each one is a little self-contained business, and the same is true of alnums, TV shows etc., but discussion of the economics from the content production side is often sorely lacking in debates about piracy.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#417

Post by SilasX » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:38 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #362

SilasX wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know that you can identify differences between abolition of copyright and a ban on all monetary compensation for lumberjacks. What you cannot do, however, is find a difference that distinguishes them in a way that defends your argument that we shouldn't worry about a world where X is only produced by charity, since some people do X for free. If you don't care that art would only be produced for free, neither s…

Again who is talking about doing something for free? Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs. It is possible plenty of people are doing it. So please spare me the strawmen.

>Again who is talking about doing something for free?

The guy that cracked your account and used it to make these comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480634 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480674 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480761

>Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs.

I'm sure, that, just as with making music, there are revenue models for lumberjacking that don't involve charging for lumberjacking services. For example, they could broadcast live video of themselves chopping down trees and charge for that. Or maybe trees should only be cut down by their owners so they're not technically earning money from chopping down a tree.

Or, you know, we could just bypass the whole charade and let people charge for the lumberjacking/artistic creations that they were responsible for (if they so wish) rather than stick to some ideological belief that it's somehow wrong to do so while hoping they come up with some convoluted way to accomplish the same thing with more restricted means.

It's great that there are ways to produce good X without invoking exclusivity rights in X; but for those (many) cases where X wouldn't otherwise be produced, I would like for that model to be an option.

That doesn't mean the current copyright regime is optimal; far from it. It just means that the mentality of "IP sucks and everyone will produce valuable stuff for free" is looney.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#418

Post by dorian-graph » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:41 PM UTC

pingswept wrote: post #201

dorian-graph wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you so much. To this person and all the others you don't have some God given right to the content they produce/deliver. Instead of pirating go without. Will life stop if you don't watch the latest episode of Community? Probably. Give it a go. If you die I have dibs on your $2000 Macbook Pro, $800 iPhone, $250 Sennheiser headphones, etc. The very phrase 'Because you are messing with my life' in this conte…

I agree with your sentiment, but it seems you have a contradiction here: " (All I have left is to make a list of the music I have and listen to in order to delete it all and slowly purchase it, which I've started doing). I either pay for something, borrow it or go without." If you really believe what you say, you'd delete all your pirated music right now. Either that, or you might modify your views a bit.

I have some free time today after work where I'm going to finish making the list and then I'll have it all deleted. :)

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#419

Post by kijin » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:42 PM UTC

nadam wrote: post #288

hxa7241 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is that this is my decision. Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do? > In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. This is a common approach, bu…

"But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user too" The question is: To what extent? If we measure how much income a person have from intellectual property and how much money they spend on intellectual property (if they not steal) then you will see the following: Most people are only consumers. A fraction of people create things as a hobby, so their consumption is not much smaller than th…

> But if you are in the 3rd camp, it is bad for you, because in that case you are 99% producer and 1% consumer of these kind of goods.

I don't think that is ever true of anybody. A writer needs to read 10, 100, 1000 books before he can produce a book of similar quality. The same applies to musicians who learn from other people's music, painters who learn from other people's paintings, and scientists who build upon other people's work. Nobody creates IP out of a vacuum. If anything, creative people are even more indebted to other people's IP than simple consumers are.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#420

Post by ThomPete » Wed, Jan 18, 2012, 10:44 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #417

ThomPete wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again who is talking about doing something for free? Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs. It is possible plenty of people are doing it. So please spare me the strawmen.

>Again who is talking about doing something for free? The guy that cracked your account and used it to make these comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480634 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480674 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480761 >Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced son…

You know just because you keep repeating the same strawmen it doesn't make them more true.

If you cant see the difference between a performance and copying the performance to re-sell it, then frankly there isn't much to discuss.